


How We Say It Here

by Galadriel1010



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Crimes & Criminals, F/F, First Kiss, In Yorkshire that's a love letter, Love Confessions, Space Stations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 17:07:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28692183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Galadriel1010/pseuds/Galadriel1010
Summary: It's not that people are emotionally constipated in Yorkshire. It's just that there's a lot of ways to say "I love you", and sometimes it looks like Yaz and the Doctor rescuing Christina from yet another alien jail, and sometimes it looks like Christina getting herself there in the first place.
Relationships: Yasmin Khan/Thirteenth Doctor/Christina de Souza
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5
Collections: Holly Poly 2020





	How We Say It Here

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shopfront](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shopfront/gifts).



Taurthiarat 3B Gamma Sector Way Station (central hub) was not a name that tripped off the tongue easily. Over its seventy-three years of service, it had therefore acquired at least sixteen other names. Mentioning three of them would be considered circumstantial evidence that could get you a minimum of three years in prison, while five of them acted as closely guarded passwords that granted entry to some of the best parties in the quadrant. To most people, however, it was simply called The Waystation, or just ‘Up’.

Situated at the nexus of five inter-sector transit routes, The Waystation had grown from a staging post on the edge of the central regions to a sprawling archipelago of a dozen stations clustered around the hub in what had become the largest human settlement in the sector. From dazzling showrooms staffed by impossibly beautiful sales assistants who fluttered around a single exquisite necklace or drifted between sincere and challenging artworks to shadowed corners of service corridors where a loitering figure wouldn’t acknowledge you, whatever you were looking for, someone in The Waystation would sell it to you. And whatever you were looking to sell, you would find a buyer. The central ring was crowned with a single vast market nearly four miles long and over a mile wide, packed with shops and stalls that crowded together in a bustling jumble under an arch of star-studded sky that raced by above an expanse of unbroken glass. It was known as the Crystal Palace, and it was, in Yaz’s expert opinion, even better than the London Exhibition of 1851.

She bit into another of the bright blue fruits the Doctor had bought from a cart near the TARDIS, back in Sector 3, and the juice spilled over her fingers again. Christina watched her lick it from her fingers and she blushed. “They’re ripe these things,” she commented. “Must be the length of time it takes to transport them out here.”

“Nah, they’re grown on the station.” The Doctor hadn’t even looked to be paying attention, but of course she was never far away and never missed an opportunity to show off. “The sunward ring is one massive farm, all hydroponics. These stations, they’re designed to be closed systems if they need to be, even the air gets pumped through and filtered out through the layers. The lungs of the ship as well as the kitchen. Those are Magdalene Berries, named after the college where they were bred. 95% of the crop is produced on stations like this. We could go and see the farm, if you like.” She peered at a jewelled lamp. “It’ll be secure, of course, but I can probably get us in.”

“You know,” Christina said thoughtfully, trailing her fingers down a carpet draped over the end of a stall, “this reminds me of the Moroccan souks. I visited them years ago, back when I was running from Interpol. The colour and the sounds and the smells, it’s like nothing else on earth. Or in space, apparently. I got a beautiful blanket for the bus, sunset hued silk, and had the most amazing goat curry from this tiny place down one of the twisting alleyways you think are going to go on forever.”

“Yeah? It’s definitely a step up on Sheffield market.”

Christina sighed heavily. “Honestly, Yaz, is there no romance in your soul at all? It is banned north of Birmingham?”

She tried her best to smother a grin. “Have you ever been to Sheffield?”  
“I have, actually. An exhibition of Victorian silverware stopped at the museum for a while.” She looked up at the huge, dark sky thoughtfully. “I think I’ve still got that tiara somewhere.”

“Wait...” But Christina was already gone, flitted off to another stall and the Doctor had taken her place, pressing a tiny cup of hot, spicy tea into Yaz’s hand with a grin. “Thanks, Doctor. This place is amazing.” Yaz gestured to the market sprawled around them with a nod. “You could spend weeks here and not see everything.”

The Doctor preened. “It’s good, isn’t it? And this is only the surface. The city goes down for half a mile below here, and that’s before you get to the starward ring. Now that’s a party. Oh! We should go to Marana Station! Honestly, twenty-seven-hour party there, and the costumes are amazing, you’ll love it.”

“Yeah? Sounds good.” Yaz sipped her tea and tried not to laugh at the look of outrage on the Doctor’s face. “Come on, before we lose her ladyship completely.”

They caught up with Christina in the next aisle, where she was picking through rings and thick bangles at a stall where the tall walls were festooned with thousands of necklaces in every metal and stone imaginable. Huge copper discs the size of the palm of Yaz's hand were enamelled with scenes from Earth and other planets of the human empire and hung between tiny, delicate birds shaped from wire so fine it was barely visible until it caught the light, and through the lot wound long ropes of coloured pearls from the oyster beds of Kalak 5. Yaz reached out for one of the discs and tugged it gently off its hook so she could admire the minute detail on a stunning vista of the Taj Mahal at sunset.

"That is on Old Earth, a very beautiful place," the shopkeeper told her, appearing at her elbow as if by magic. "Stunning, isn't it? And the work is very skilled, very delicate."

"I can see that." Yaz put it back as carefully as she'd taken it and pointed at another a little way away from it. "Is that one Old Earth too?"

"Yes. The original New York." She looked at Yaz shrewdly, weighing up the chances of a sale, and trailed her fingers along a tray of rings. "You are interested in Old Earth history?"

Yaz smiled to herself. "You could put it that way. Although I suppose I've lost interest recently. It's funny where you find reminders, isn't it?"

"Yaz!" Christina practically dragged her across to the other side of the stall to show her a bracelet shaped like a snake that wrapped all the way up her arm to the elbow, with its chin resting on the back of her hand and its tiny gemstone eyes glittering. The metal was warm to the touch and dark, but it shimmered in the light like an oil sheen across the carved scales. "Isn't it beautiful? It almost looks alive."

"It's amazing. The workmanship on everything here is incredible." She looked around to ask the Doctor if they actually had any money and, if they did, how ridiculous the prices here were, but couldn't spot her. "Have you seen where the Doctor went? She was here a minute ago."

Christina shrugged. "She made a sort of excited noise, said 'I've always wanted one of those' and went off in that direction," she said, pointing. "She's not gone far. I bet it's another robot vacuum cleaner."

"Or a kettle," Yaz agreed. "She did say she'd lost another one this week. You stay here, I'll see if I can find her. We shouldn't get split up. You know what happens when she wanders off on her own."

They shared a knowing look and Christina turned her attention back to the jewellery. "I'll be here. Scream if she's found trouble again."

The Doctor, for one, had not found trouble. Instead, she'd found some very complicated sets of instruments, and was crouching in front of one and peering through the glass dome at the gently ticking mechanism inside while the attendant, maybe even inventor, talked at a mile a minute about its workings. When she spotted Yaz's reflection in the glass, the Doctor bolted to her feet like a child caught with her hand in the sweetie jar. "Yaz, look at this! Isn't it beautiful?"

It was stunning, all gleaming bronze and polished wood under the glass dome, even if it was also bewildering. Yaz couldn't take her eyes off the Doctor's giddy excitement, though. "Gorgeous," she agreed. "Is this what you said you needed?"

"Oh, no. Just want one. I got a set of really tiny screwdrivers though!"

Yaz had to grin. The Doctor's enthusiasm was as contagious as ever. "Always good when you find just what you're looking for."

"Yeah." The Doctor stared at her, then grinned and patted the top of the glass dome. "Anyway, time we moved on. Thanks for this, Sikkitak. Good to meet you and see one of these working."

They strolled back towards Christina, dodging through the increasingly dense crowds as what passed for evening on the station wore on, and Yaz snuck another look at the Doctor's bright grin. "I like days like this," she blurted before she can stop herself. "You know, the quiet ones. No running, no chaos, just the three of us seeing the universe. It's nice."

"Yeah?" The Doctor grinned sheepishly. "We do run into a lot of chaos, don't we? It's the TARDIS, she goes looking for it. I'll have to have words, make sure she lets us have more days like this."

Of course, that was when the shouting started.

# # #

Two severe looking station police officers were cuffing Christina and reading her her (very complicated and long-winded) rights while a third talked to the irate stallholder. Yaz watched them from two levels deep in the crowd, standing on her toes to see over people's shoulders, and groaned out loud as Christina was pushed into some sort of travel pod to be taken away. "Not again," she sighed. "Christina, what have you done this time?"

"This is a problem." The Doctor grabbed Yaz's arm and tugged her away. "Do you think they'll recognise you?"

"A problem?" she yelped. "Of course it's a... I don't know, probably? We got talking about Earth, then Christina called me over to look at this snake thing, then I went to find you. Why does it matter if they saw me?"

The Doctor groaned and rubbed at her face. "Alright, back to the TARDIS, now."

"The TARDIS? Doctor, we've got to get her out." She had to run to catch up with the Doctor's long strides back up the length of the hall. Fighting against the crowd who were pushing to see what the excitement was slowed them down enough for her to grab the Doctor's arm again. "Doctor, what are you planning?"

"Look, they take stealing seriously here. Really seriously. If they saw you and think you're with her, they'll arrest you too, and I can't risk that. So you need to go back to the TARDIS and wait, while I..."

Yaz stopped dead, and because she refused to let go of the Doctor's arm she had to stop too. "I'm not going, Doctor. We've got to get her out. I'm sure it was just a misunderstanding! I told her I was going to find you and see if we had any money, maybe she was just coming to find us or..." She trailed off at the look on the Doctor's face and scowled. "We've got to try! I'm not leaving her."

"She keeps putting you in danger! I can't..." The Doctor sighed and looked away from Yaz's glare. She leaned back against the side wall of a stall draped with richly coloured silks and velvets and pressed her hands against her eyes. "Yaz..."

"I'm not going without her," Yaz repeated. "I've got to get her out."

The Doctor tipped her head back to look at the stars drifting by above them. "This is how they say 'I love you' in Yorkshire, isn't it? This... stubborn refusal to let go."

She managed a half-smile. "Yeah, one of the ways." When the Doctor didn't move, Yaz reached out and caught her hand. "When you sent us back from Gallifrey I spent so long in that TARDIS, trying to work out how to get it working. Covered the walls with my notes, you saw them. Trying to go back for you." She chuckled and dropped her gaze to the Doctor's hand, still clasped in her own. "I slept in there sometimes. Too often. Never managed to convince it to spawn me a bedroom."

"Oh. Yeah, my TARDIS is a bit special like that. Mind of her own half the time. She said she stole me and..." She came to an abrupt halt. "Wait, you mean..."

"Yeah."

"Oh. Oh!" The grin dawned on her face at the same glacial pace as realisation. "Oh, I didn't..."

Yaz laughed. "You're such an idiot."

The grin evaporated and the Doctor glared at her. "Oi! Wait. Is that another way..."

"Yep."

"Aww." The Doctor beamed back at her. "God, I really am an idiot at times. She keeps telling me that. Right. Let's do this then."

Yaz frowned. "Do what?"

"Rescue your other girlfriend. Come on, I've got a plan."

# # #

The station police station was nondescript and familiar in a bland and functional sort of way. In Yaz's increasingly varied experience, more so since Christina joined them, the standard format she was used to in Hillsborough was pretty much the same across time and space. Some sort of public interface at the front, cells at the back, and offices either in the middle or above. The size ranged from a single room to an entire space station (that one had not been Christina's fault), but the basic layout remained. On the Waystation it was located on the corner of a corridor on one of the service floors and close to one of the long passages that connected the market hall to the other rings of the station, with bleak steel walls that would have found themselves at home mong the brutalism of any run-down British city and marked only by a sign above a large noticeboard covered with wanted signs, cheerfully grim public information warnings, and an incongruous advert for a charity ball. The double doors next to the noticeboard also had the word 'Police' printed across them and opened at a push to admit Yaz and the Doctor into the sort of soulless waiting room that you felt might genuinely be purgatory.

The Doctor didn't comment on any of it, just breezed past the couple of people waiting on the hard plastic chairs and straight up to the desk where the obligatory bored-looking sergeant looked up from what she probably wanted them to think was work. "Good afternoon," the sergeant said in a flat tone of voice. "Can I help you?"

"Yeah, hi, this is a bit embarrassing actually. You see, we think our friend has just been arrested. Probably a big misunderstanding, we're new to the station, you see, never been before." The Doctor flashed her psychic paper at the sergeant quickly and grinned at her again. "Obviously I'm not wanting you to just let her out, that would be ridiculous, but I've got all our papers, you see."

The sergeant's eyes flicked to Yaz and she felt herself slip back into familiar ways; muscle memory triggered by the fading notices on the wall. "ID, travel cards, proof of our arrival, that sort of thing," Yaz explained. "I'm sure it'll be helpful to whoever's investigating."

"Right, well." The sergeant drifted her fingers over the screen in front of her and nodded thoughtfully. "You've just come from the market hall? What's your friend's name?"

"Christina. Christina de Souza." She forced herself to chuckle. "Might be calling herself Lady. She's a bit like that at times. I'm Yasmine Khan."

"Hmm. Have a seat, and I'll see if someone is free to talk to you."

Yaz sat. The Doctor paced. Time seemed to drag on, even though the clock on the wall opposite them suggested it was only ten minutes or so, if it even counted minutes. The old woman on the other set of chairs clucked her tongue a couple of times and then shuffled off out of the door onto the street beyond - corridor, whatever it was called on a space station - leaving just Yaz and the Doctor and one surly looking bloke. "You're not good at patience, are you?" she asked when the Doctor set off for another circuit of the room.

"Nope. Never was, and now... Nope." She groaned and rubbed at her face again. "Oh, come on..."

"Yasmine Khan?" A harried looking police officer in what looked like the contemporary equivalent of a cheap suit was striding across the vinyl floor towards them. "You're here with Christina de Souza?"

She jumped to her feet and shook his outstretched hand, surprised in a distant sort of way that people still did that. "Yes, that's us. Can I ask what's going on?"

"Your friend," he said, managing to make it sound like an insult, "was caught stealing from one of the stalls in the main market hall. The store owner gave us your description as well, as it happens."

"Oh. Oh!" Yaz looked round at the Doctor desperately. "Yes, I think I know what happened. You see... Christina and I didn't have any money on us, because we just arrived and needed to get it..." Did they do currency conversion? Probably not. "Sorted out. The Doctor deals with all of that when we're travelling, don't you?"

The Doctor caught on gratifyingly quickly. "Yes! Yes, I do. First time off planet for these two, and you know what the markets are like for tourists. So I had our money, and Christina..."

"Christina was staying by the stall where we'd seen these gorgeous necklaces whilst I went to find the Doctor. So we could buy one."

The officer looked only slightly convinced. "She was seen pocketing a very expensive Cloisonné necklace."

"A... oh, yes! With a picture of Old Earth on it? That's the one I was looking at. I imagine she was bringing it to show us."

"Show you the one you'd already seen?"

Yaz did not flinch. "She knows what I like. Gets a bit over-excited sometimes."

He sighed heavily, with the slight relief of a man who can see a lot of his paperwork disappearing with a single very awkward conversation. "You said you have her papers with you too?"

The Doctor beamed. "Yeah, of course." She fished in her pocket and handed him the psychic paper. "Just visitors, arrived today, leaving soon. Bit of an adventure, you know."

He stared at it for long enough that Yaz worried he'd seen through it, but eventually handed it back. "Just a misunderstanding," he agreed. "I suggest you keep a closer eye on your charges in future, Dr Smith."

"Oh yes, absolutely. Won't happen again," the Doctor assured him as she took the psychic paper back. "We'll be very careful, won't we Yaz?"

"I will definitely not accidentally steal anything; I can assure you."

He gave them another look that said he wasn't at all convinced, but the allure of a simple form over a complicated case won out again. "See that you don't. I'll go and fetch your friend."

# # #

They were left waiting once more as the clock ticked away above the littered notice board opposite them, and Yaz clasped her hands between her knees to keep from fiddling. The Doctor was poking through the notices with a sort of absent curiosity, chuntering to herself about whatever she'd found there, and Yaz watched her with a fond smile she couldn't fight down. When she was caught looking, she let it warm. "Found owt interesting?"

"Owt?" Her nose scrunched as she grinned at Yaz. "Nah, nowt. Do you really say that?"

"Apparently." She was about to say something about homesickness, about it being the little things she missed most, but caught herself in time and instead looked down at her hands. "We're not very good at using words in Yorkshire. Not full ones, anyway. Who needs words when you can just grunt meaningfully, right?"

The Doctor scrunched her nose and turned her attention back to the noticeboard. "You know, I've never met a species as good at humans at saying what they mean without ever saying it. Sometimes you say the opposite of what you mean, and you still understand each other! I think I'm starting to get there with understanding you. Cats are much easier."

"We're worth it, though." She got to her feet and joined the Doctor at the noticeboard. "That's why you keep coming back, isn't it?"

"Yeah. Always." The Doctor turned to look at her again. "There's just something special about you."

Christina's return was heralded at that moment by the low buzz of an electronic lock being released, and the door through which their harried detective had disappeared opened once more, admitting the pair of them to the secure area behind the reception desk. He removed her handcuffs and got her to leave a fingerprint on the tablet, then opened the final door to let her out to join Yaz and the Doctor. "Do us all a favour and keep her out of trouble?" he told the Doctor. "And make sure your paperwork is all filed before docking. We didn't even have her on record until she got here."

"Right, yes. Never had trouble before, got a bit lax with it." She rocked on the balls of her feet and nodded at Christina. "All sorted though. Thanks for helping us get her..."

"Just... get out of here," he told them, pinching the bridge of his nose in a way Yaz could entirely sympathise with. "And try not to come back."

They made their way back to the TARDIS as quickly as they could, and the austere service corridors seemed to give way to the brightly decorated trading halls much more quickly than Yaz remembered from their journey down there. They had been waiting for so long that the evening, if you could call it that on a space station where day and night were purely theoretical, had worn on. Stallholders had shut up and gone home and others had taken their place, and the vast open spaces of the market hall had been colonised by a sea of tables through which hawkers strolled with trays piled high with everything from jewel-toned fruits to delicate pastries, hefty kebabs to thick, rich breads. The smells were heavenly, and the entire courtyard was a barrage of noise, but Yaz grabbed Christina's hand and tugged her on before she could stop, back to the TARDIS and safety.

As soon as the door was closed behind them, she dragged her hand from Christina's and shoved her against the wall. "What the hell were you thinking?" she demanded. "You know it isn't safe. This isn't a game, Christina. Do you even know what the sentence is for theft on this station? It could have been years; it could have been execution!"

"I knew you'd get me out of there. Besides, you wanted it and I wanted you to have it."

"You're going to get yourself hurt one of these days, or worse!" Christina stared back at her and the growled in frustration. "You're such an idiot. You need to stop... showing off! It's not big and it's not clever, and if you get yourself hurt because you think you need to impress us, I'm going to be so pissed off."

Christina dragged her gaze from Yaz's eyes to her lips, and her startled expression morphed into a smirk that did nothing to calm Yaz's irritation. "You know, if you're trying to put me off pissing you off, I feel I have to tell you that this is having quite the opposite effect."

"Oh my... you're impossible!" she growled. Her hands bunched in the lapels of Christina's jacket and she pulled her close at the same time as she surged forwards, pressing the other woman up against the wall and bringing their lips together to kiss away her satisfyingly startled gasp. It only took a moment for Christina to get with the program, before her mouth opened under Yaz's and her hands ran down her back to pull her closer. Sparks danced up Yaz's spine when Christina got a hand under her T shirt to rest on bare skin at the small of her back, but she pulled back and couldn't look at Christina. "Please," she whispered. "Please be careful."

Christina's chest heaved against Yaz's with deep, unsteady breaths. "I... I'll try." Her fingers brushed hair out of Yaz's face with surprising gentleness. "I thought you two..."

They looked to the Doctor as one, and she grinned back at them, hands in her pockets. "Aw, you two..." She forced her grin back and scuffed a foot against the floor. "You're... you're both idiots. That's what you are."

Christina made an offended noise, bus Yaz just laughed, wrapped her arms around Christina's waist and rested her head on her shoulder. "Yeah, but we're your idiots. You're stuck with us now."

Christina sighed. "I love you both. But I'm not sure I'll ever understand you." She tangled her fingers in Yaz's hair and tipped her head up for another kiss, which both of them understood quite well.


End file.
